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Talk:Arquebus/@comment-176.58.21.130-20190118171833/@comment-45075715-20200219143611
Are you going by just weapon numbers? Because I find them extremely misleading especially in this context. I've found the arquebus so ineffective that I no longer upgrade Barclay Balestras to Arquebuisers when the upgrade is available, since I've found in practice that switching them from x-bow to arquebus significantly diminishes the speed at which they kill enemies (even shielded ones). I had this dream when I saw the 3.9x updates with arquebus introduced (hadn't played PoP in some years) of riflemen firing through shield walls and cutting through them like butter, only to find the reality of the situation completely different to the point where I hate arquebus now (I still found a renewed love for PoP after some years but I've never been so hyped up only to be disappointed with a potentially game-changing update like firearm introduction only to find it so lackluster). I never liked With Fire and Sword all that much but the idea of occasionally using and very rarely facing against firearms in PoP got me so hyped up and it's been years since I've been so disappointed with such a cool-sounding game feature. Something about the lengthy reload times or the way the AI aims with those or maybe a combo make the arquebus absolutely inferior to x-bows and bows in my tests. I could swear that my arquebus troops, even with high firearm prof, are missing over half their shots since I only see a 2-3 kills when dozens fire at the same time even in siege offense firing into a crowd at the entrance, only to have to wait ages for them to reload to do it again and just rack up another two or three kills while x-bows and bows are flooding my game log with kills left and right. I don't even see it as apples and oranges, just superior apples (bows/x-bows) to inferior apples (arquebus). At the very least I don't see arquebus that effective even in siege offense unless you mix in x-bow/bow troops and get fancy and command the arquebusiers to hold fire in lots of contexts to get the most out of volley of bullets. It might not be an AI accuracy issue with firearms but possibly more that they're mostly aiming at the same few targets (a general problem I have with the ranged AI even when I really spread them out when they waste so many arrows/bolts/bullets on the nearest lone enemy walking up a hill only to be overkilled with like 30 arrows/bolts/maybe bullets fired at him at once), so lots of shots are wasted firing at the same target (I'm not sure how much this accounts for the missed shots, but it makes a lot of sense even though I can't see the projectiles of the arquebus to be sure). This isn't as big of an issue with ranged weapons that don't have such a ridiculously slow rate of fire besides wasted ammo but it's a much, much bigger issue for units to miss a shot with a very slow rate of fire since they're wasting so much time/DPS and not just ammo reloading with their missed shots before they can fire again. The issues I'm complaining about are very specific to the AI using arquebus -- a skilled human player might be able to avoid missing shots left and right like this to avoid paying for that costly reloading time needlessly, but we only get to control one character directly and the AI controls the rest, and the AI seems especially retarded with arquebus and slow weapons in general -- like the slow attack speed pronounces how ineffective the AI is at carefully aiming with their weapon (melee or ranged). Now it's like I want a machine gun if I'm to use firearms again with AI units because even a retard with a machine gun is bound to hit a lot of things. :-D It might also be the case that the way the AI fails to compensate for moving targets (always aiming behind them from where they were at, not where they're going) is somehow more penalizing with a super high missile speed (though the AI is suprisingly good at compensating vertically for gravity). I could imagine in such cases, especially when firing upwards at a target like in siege offense, that missing the target will more often miss everything behind it, whereas an arrow/bolt volley might still luckily hit something behind/beside the target. I don't know. It's all conjecture. All I know is that my riflemen are firing a volley of 30+ shots at medium range and missing about 90% of them when I only see 2-3 kills in my log at those moments while waiting for what seems like an eternity for them to reload for another round. There's likely psychological bias on my part impatiently watching them reload more than anything else, but I'm pretty sure the kill rates and overall damage throughput plummet with firearms vs. x-bows and bows given how slowly kills show up in my log and how slowly the kills rack up in the numbers. I tried in my first playtest to get as many Barclary Arquebusiers as I could, and later upgrading my CKO units to amass arquebus. In both cases I find their killing speeds substantially plummeting in virtually every scenario I tried (including siege offense) to the point where I abandoned arquebus in favor of bow or x-bow in all scenarios. I don't even have Donavan using his arquebus anymore. I switch him to light or maiden x-bow ASAP. I don't even give the arquebus to low-level Leslie in spite of the lack of STR requirements -- I find her more effective even with a hunting crossbow and mount in more situations than not. I just sell the arquebus and bullets and get rid of it since I find no practical use whatsoever -- after getting all hyped up with the intro of firearms in PoP, trying them out like a drooling fan, and being bitterly disappointed, I just see rubbish now. I've developed a grudge against the arquebus, and I will have my vengeance using x-bows and rolling my eyes at those who favor arquebus (unless they know something I don't)! :-D Unless I'm overlooking something the arquebus is absolutely inferior to even the weaker x-bows in most, if not all, situations which makes so little sense to me for a weapon that's so difficult to acquire/access.